My recent works are deeply rooted in a practice of en plein air landscape painting. The regenerative nature of the forest is evoked through non-hierarchical depiction of mountain streams, the forest floor, vibrant life and decay. Without a horizon line and close to the ground, I treat the interplay of forms with care. My compositions are punctuated with moments of nothing; evoking the breath of the living environment through the absence of paint in rhythmic intervals. Although rare in oil painting, this technique speaks to traditions of watercolour, printmaking, and ink drawing. I approach my subject with humility – making no attempt to accurately depict the ever-changing growth. Ankle deep in water and completely focused, my paintings serve as a window to my encounter with the stream and all that lies adjacent.
I invite my viewers to watch myself watching, a meticulous process beginning with multiple watercolour studies made from observation. Returning to the studio, I collage and negotiate with my compositions: small sketches are scaled-up to larger oil paintings, respecting the intuitive gestures and essence of my original watercolours. The black and white paintings mimic the cadence of dappled light, rustling leaves and flowing water.
My hope is that the viewer experiences an encompassing transmission of the stream and its circumjacent environment. As a counterpoint to the hectic over-consumption and over-production that characterizes the generality of our every-day lives, I offer a measured practice, inviting the viewer to a slow searching gaze, a pause, an exploration.
Notations no. 17
2014, 20 x 96 inches (50 x 244 cm) oil on terraskin, catalogue #14T57
Artist’s Biography
Susan G. Scott was born in Montreal, Quebec where she now lives, teaches, and maintains her studio practice as a landscape painter.
Scott’s education and early art practice were semi-nomadic, taking her to various places across the United States and Canada for 20 years before she returned to settle in her place of her birth. She left Montreal for New York City in 1966 to study painting at Pratt Institute and later attended schools of fine art in Boston, Maine, Montreal, and finally the New York Studio School of Drawing and Painting in 1972. An invitation to teach painting at Emily Carr College of Art in Vancouver brought Scott back to Canada in 1980. Since then, she’s taught painting in various universities and art schools throughout North America and continues to be a dedicated teacher and mentor within Concordia University’s fine arts community.
Often working independently of artistic trends, Scott’s voice as an artist is defined both by her early foundation in abstract expressionism and an unswerving enthusiasm and dedication to observational painting. Scott’s earlier work developed serially (over the course of several years) and was often based in literature, drawing inspiration from, among other texts, Jean Cocteau, Franz Kafka and the folktales of Issac Bashevis Singer. In recent years, Scott has focused her practice on composition en plein air. Observational watercolour studies are methodically negotiated and transformed into large-scale oil paintings. Her landscape series Streams of Light (2018) and Variations (2016-2017) refute the stability of a Cartesian horizon line and invite instead an immersive, non-hierarchical experience of the woodlands. With abstract expressionist gestures threaded throughout her career, Scott balances intuitive brushwork and observational praxis.
Scott has had many one person and group shows, including three solo exhibitions that toured Canada: Susan G. Scott: Works from 1974 to 1983, Blindman’s Buff (1988-1991) and Les Enfants Terribles (2003-2005). Her work can be found in permanent collections in Canada and Europe including Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Nickle Arts Museum, Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal, and Collection du Fonds régional d’art contemporain d’île-de-France. Scott’s work has received support from the Canada Council, CALQ, and the 1% program for Intégrations des Arts à L’Architecture run by Quebec’s Ministry of Culture and Communications.